Biking Hungary

6 August 2023, Dömsöd, 67.33km
Strand 7,000Ft [R379]

How to turn a "mostly flat" 54km into an all-day 66km ride in one easy lesson...
Our route to Szeged, our Romanian visa destination, is determined by affordable accommodation ie by the location of campsites. This does not necessarily, and in fact has not, put us on the most direct route there. First step for any cycle day is finding a place to camp within a doable distance. Next step is working out how best to get there.
When plotting a route, I compare three options on Google Maps: driving (no tolls or highways), cycling and walking. "Walking" has often put us on wonderful quiet country lanes, but sometimes on un-cycleable sections through forests and fields. "Cycling" can be way too pedantic, especially in cities, where the route eschews a straightforward ride in favour of zig-zag cycle paths.
My choice in the end is a guessing game that mainly seems to work well, and sometimes not.
We had to cycle around 15km through the southern end of Budapest, headed west toward the Danube, before turning south toward Dömsöd. Except for one confusing section where we had to cross an abandoned railway pedestrian bridge, the ride through the city was easy. It ended at route 51 which both "driving" and "walking" proposed we take for the next 39km.
Mmmm... After just 5km or so, 51 sprouted a no cycling sign, leaving us with no choice but to pick up the much longer, more complicated and rather challenging cycle option. This included a longish mud track through ploughed fields (just as we reached the end, a vehicle entering from the front got bogged down), and a long segment on uncertain dirt with no-entry signs we did not understand and ignored, taking us through a gravel mining plant with kms of conveyor belts hard at work on a Sunday with seemingly no-one needing to keep an eye on them.
When we finally hit tar again, Charl proposed we stop following Google and take the longer but easier route through the village of Apaj. We were delighted to find an open coffee shop there, taking a cappuccino and cheese cake break before the last 8km to Dömsöd in a strong headwind.
The small Strand campsite in Dömsöd sits right on the Danube and offers very basic A-frame bungalows with thin mattresses on the chipboard floor for under our budget. Yay. We unpacked our very wet tent to dry while we enjoyed the hamburgers served from the Strand's kitchen. It rained for three nights in a row in Budapest with the storms on the first two bringing down branches and trees throughout the city. That our tent withstood the rain and wind was fab.